This essay compares and contrasts the construction of balloon map stitching of the Calumet river to the Shun Tak Center and Macau ferry Terminal in Hong Kong. As both build on the desire to mimic the movement of water. their mapping manifests the metaphor of liquidity. The economic term of liquidity is a body of cash and assets that is spent for the everyday running of a business (Mostly Economics. 2007). This term takes on the short waves in water. Waves are formed in water to restore its equilibrium, which are fixed assets. Fixed assets are long term savings that are stored and untouched.

   Axonometric Drawings of the Shun Tak Center
    and Macau Ferry Terminal (Lampugnani, 41)

The Shan Tak Center and Macau ferry terminal is a fixed asset. Located in the northern shore of Hong Kong island. The base acts as a pier from Hong Kong to Macau. The distance from Macau to Hong Kong is sixty kilometers, which takes about an hour by ferry. The close proximate of the two island is reflected with the parallel tower. As they are twin towers that are four stories high with a steel frame structure that weighs 21000 tones of steel. Finished with a mirror-like walling the terminal is meant to romanticize travel into a futuristic look. The ferry is named turbo jet. To build on to the speed of the travel and create a space like quality (Lampugnani. Prestal- Verlag, 41.1993)

The height of the tower is for commercial use. Viewing the sea in an elevated position creates a panoramic vision. The vanishing point gives the observer a body and position as the center of the vision. Flattening the sea, to a view a panoramic. The superior spectator flatting up in the air. So the taller you are in the building, the more you are disconnected from the ground and vision isisolated. Panoramas view creates supposition as it allows the panning of the eye to expand into an overall surveillance from a distance. As a result, the horizon becomes a line. Similarly, linear perspective establishes an imaginary stable observer and horizon. The perspective completes the horizon line as it forms an imaginary floating observer and an imaginary stable ground. (Steyerl, E-flux, 2011). The view on a sky scrapper isolates the eye to its body. Creating no distractions and a perfect horizon lines.

Skyscrapers being spaces for capital and business are introduced by the migrancy of Shang Hai industrialist after the communist revolution. Shifting Hong Kong’s identity to local manufacture to global finance. (Abbas 185). This vision is maintained as most of these window walls can’t be open. Creating a clear division between the inside and outside. There is always a blue tint in the glass that implies the sea is an undisturbed blue.

But in the outside the sea is green and muddy. The construction of sky scrappers in Hong Kong uses traditional bamboo scaffolding. Bamboo scaffolding creates a temporal framework around the building. The bamboo stands by creating gridded walls that joins together by plastic fiber straps. This structure allow construction workers and materials to climb up and move around the surface of the building. The bamboo framework is wrapped by sheets of plastic fiber net.

 Bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong

However, this structure leaves when the building is complete as the framework is deconstructed and the bamboo rods are reused to build other skyscrapers. Lampugnani observes how the process of building and the building depend on one another but is never shown fixed, he says “Although there is mare building and rebuilding taking place there is reflection on building. There's architecture self- imposed limit in inferiors the parapraxis. Keeping straight and narrow architecture shows its historical myopia is does not see the techniques of construction as a larger cultural field.” (Lampugnani Prestal- Verlag 197,1993). Therefore, skyscrapers appear to be a seamless sheet of window. But the framework that supported are pieces of bamboo sticks, stacked and overlapped. Through the physical body of construction workers climbing and tying the framework together. The process is green and muddy. But the result is a blue tint.

In contrast, the balloon stitch map reveals the tangible relationship of the boat in the Calumet river. The balloon map begins by strapping a helium balloon with a video camera and a string. Similar to how one loosens the string to allow the kite to fly. The balloon is strapped to the boat that moves along the river. On November last year South Bronx Environmental task force collaborated with the experimental Geographies class in SAIC to map the calumet river. To have a representation of the river. As the view and the river is not on Google and constantly blocked by waste industries monopolizing the river. The balloon mapping process started because there was restricted aerial access of a gulf after an oil spill. The EPA said that there was an area that was unaffected by the spill but the activist didn't believe them. So they strapped a balloon on a boat to collect their own data only to find out that there was the oil spill in the gulf (Bautista, 2014).

The stitching part of the map happens after by taking still screenshot from the disorienting and shaky recording. The video are converted into frames and the puzzled together by recognizable repetition of places and objects. As a result pictures overlap each other and the shape of the map resembles the balloon.

The map is the desire to own the representation of the lake. As the neighborhood living near the river is being blocked by the waste industries. The neighborhood once had a transparent and circulation relationship with the river when steel industries lived with the river.

In both places and materials, Calumet with steel and Hong Kong with glass, have the desire to hold on the circulating and clear quality of water. This is visibly represented by mapping it on the lake and by building mountains that look like seas. The characteristic of water constantly moving and undisturbed is the view through a window of a skyscraper. Liquidity calculates the price of moving back and fourth for running the business. It estimates just enough so the rest is fixed.Liquidity is meant to disappear as the labor of constant movement erases itself. In return what is saved, the fixed assets is the tall structure of steel and glass. The homologous relationship of fixed assets will stay dense, heavy and float on top of liquidity. The eye in a skyscraper removes the body and the labor to maintain an undisturbed vision that the sea is infinite and undisturbed. The body transported vertically and horizontally of the building and the bamboo scaffolding technique to construct the building will never disturb the view. Where as the balloon mapping technique embraces transportation and bamboo scaffolding technique as the vision. The movement and labor pieces together the lake as it current form. However the similarity of their desire to own the lake and sea reflects their own form. The balloon map is to form the lake but ends up being balloon like. The Shan Tak center and Macau Ferry terminal is a place owns an infinite sea view that is undisturbed through a vertical horizon that never touch the sea it is reflecting.